It is better not to speak of happiness or unhappiness…

I have neglecting my blog. I have just been wanting to disconnect myself from the Internet. Staring at this screen is making me insane, but I’m back.

Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star really didn’t for me. I feel like I am channeling Ben’s anger from The Passion to this. The idea of writing about writing and discussing inner struggles throughout the story telling itself was distracting and obtrusive. The whole idea made me question the reality of the situation and who exactly Rodrigo was and his personal relationship to Macabea. The book got me so worked up. I can’t imagine a life so depressing and seclusive, not feeling the need to defend yourself because you accept who are and revel in your lack of intelligence. She doesn’t need to be anything else because she has accepted who she is and doesn’t think she can do anything about it. “She wasn’t even aware that she was happy.’”

Overwhelmingly pathetic, but can you help but sympathize? Rodrigo holds her fate in his hands in the end which made the situation to be nothing but a fabrication of his intellectual mind. I don’t know how long I can talk about this. I don’t understand why I have let this all get to me. And the last line of the novel? No….

I don’t think that Rio de Janeiro was a key factor in the novel at all, as compared to the other books we have studied this semester. The city felt distant and not in control. It felt as though it could have been set up in a million different cities, because the distinct line between the poor and the fortunate is so entirely common. i had a hard time visualizing the city itself through it lack of description or importance.

Although I did have an overall issue with the book, I did find lines that I can’t seem to erase from my thoughts.

“Am I a monster or is this that what it means to be a person?”

The idea of having nothing to live for…. This wasn’t my kind of book. Maybe this just wasn’t my day.

Mrs. Dalloway Walk

So on my journey to finding critical essays for the Mrs. Dalloway paper, I found a “Mrs. Dalloway Walk”. So if you are ever in London you should totally check this out. Role play a little bit or something.

http://orlando.jp.org/VWSGB/dat/dwalk.html

Mrs. Dalloway

“I give it to you!”

One of the most moving characters for me would be that of Septimus. A shell shocked former soldier, Septimus is forced to face the harshness of reality through his inability to feel and his marriage to Rezia. After several doctors and psychologists visitations, Septimus is ultimately given the choice of ending his life or surrendering it completely to the hands around him. He chooses suicide. Throughout the novel, each character longs for their own sense of privacy. Be it Clarissa wandering through her house during her own party or Peter Walsh following the woman around the park instead of approaching his forthcoming thoughts of death. And in a sense through Septimus throwing himself out of the window he is entirely in his private world. He no longer was going to allow doctors of lovers to enter that state of mind, and despite this being a public act he is not surrendering to anyone else. As he disembarks from life he shouts out, “I give it to you!”, which demonstrates his refusal to give his soul to Sir Williams or Dr. Holmes through the first person. He choose his destiny, sick of allowing other people to tell him what to think or feel.

Septimus’s death opens the eyes of the other characters. They each have their own opinion and thoughts about death that is constantly beating their brains. Clarissa is constantly thinking back to the moment at Bourton when she and Sally were so content with life that they would be satisfied to die in that moment. This memory is stamped on her brain and causes her to question the life that she has chosen, and she sees Septimus’s death as a communication to these thoughts, indirectly connecting to him. Overall I really enjoyed the novel.

One of the craziest feelings in the world is realizing that you may never  return to a place once again. A place that for so many years you claimed as a staple in your life, a second home. Those last glimpses of a city filled with childhood memories and smiles and tears and everything dysfunctional. I waved goodbye to Greenville, Texas this week. Without my dragon to breath on, our family has said its goodbyes. Goodbyes to the town my father was partially raised in and I spent nearly half of my holidays at. I didn’t get to eat that last Cb’s burger or get lost in the country. And I don’t know that I ever will. Its as though a piece is missing, despite those cliches. I didn’t know I was so attached to a place, to those memories. And the last glimpse was unbearable. One of the worst days of my life, too many tears for a daughter to see. And it was like the city knew I would never return and it tried to capture me with tornadoes and black skies. I still escaped. And I am now back in this city, and the moment I stepped off that plane from Texas I fell in love all over again. I have been living in the city. Really living. Going out until dawn. Finding new smiles, new faces who too have places they have forever said goodbye too. And we are alive. And not going back.

Do the right thing?

Do the Right Thing is one of those compelling films that leaves you feeling heavy as you walk away. Something is off, and you cant stop thinking about how real and straightforward these issues really are. Racism is inescapable and in this film it is only blocks away from where we currently find ourselves. I can honestly say I was moved through the films raw simplicity and what appears to be somewhat amateur is actually completely legitimate. It was as though I was living inside someone else’s head and perhaps that is what made the ending of the film so difficult for me to watch.

The title of the film provokes the thought process of who exactly did ‘do the right thing’. Who is the true hero, if there is even a specific hero at all. For me, one of the most compelling characters was Radio Raheem. He carries such rich significance as he walks through the neighborhood with a ‘Bed-Stuy or Die’ t-shirt and his beloved boom box. His fingers are laced with gold studded rings that spell out LOVE and HATE on his knuckles. In the middle of the film he gives on a speech on the rift between these two symbols, and this struggle is so evident throughout the entirety of the movie. In the final scene, Mookie takes a stand and throws a garbage can through the window of Sal’s all the while screaming the word HATE. Its a never ending battle. Love and Hate. But does this struggle justify the events in the movie. Radio Raheem is killed by the police in a hate struggle over the blacks in this community. Sal’s is burned down after a protest to his shop because there is only white heroes plastered on the wall. Hate cannot justify violence it? Rage and anger is completely understandable in the film but does that make it ‘right’?

Rest in Peace Edna Johns, mother grandmother and dragon.

You will be forever loved and missed.   I love you.

First Critical Paper

An Ironic Relationship

 Sharon Olds’ poem “Summer Solstice” exudes the city of New York through ironic stimulation of splendor combined with loneliness in a suicidal scene. Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, also did this with his photographs. In his photograph, “Scene of the Crime”, the viewer is shown a scene of a murder through the eyes of women and children. Despite the horrific crime in front of them, the expressions on the faces of those exposed is one of awe and excitement rather than fear of an exposure to the corruption of the city surrounding them. A mixture of beauty and despair, just as Olds does throughout her poem. This all can be compared to that of essayist Edward Abbey in “Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night.” Although the essay is an account of the city through the eyes of a man from jersey, the image of New York City is a mixture of splendor and loneliness.  Abbeys says that “the city is doomed… human hatred” but “the loneliness is not enough. We must save the city. It is the essence and substance of us all—we cannot lose it without diminishing our stature as a nation…”  (Abbey 100-101) The good comes with the bad. The beauty of the city combines with existential loneliness.  Olds’ poem describes such a relationship with the city. On this “longest day of the year” loneliness reaches its peak and life doesn’t seem worth living, but the city brings itself together. (Olds 1) Spreading its sheets like wings, “prepared to receive life at a birth”. (Olds 22) The day represents the feelings that residents have for their own cities. The poem represents this peculiar relationship of city and resident. Weegee captures this relationship as well. It’s an exposure to everything that is beautiful and hideous in this city. Even admist a crime scene, there can be smiles on the faces of the witnesses. Even though everything is falling apart with suicide and rooftops, the city will share a cigarette together.

Sharon Olds’ poem is a testament to this very relationship of New York and its residents. Through the tale of a man prepared for suicide on top of a New York building, readers are given a sense that this image does not shock its witnesses through imagery that make the scene almost seem beautiful instead of tragic. In what would be a seemingly horrifying presentation, Olds condenses time and shows the inescapable surrounding beauty through such images as the suicidal man’s shirt “glowing its milky glow” and “red, growing ends”. (Olds 25, 38) These metaphors and images control the scene around him. Despite this man’s austere, empty life, he is surrounded by the beauty of a New York City summer. The picture is bigger than his tragedy. The eyewitness becomes, within itself, a poetic vision. Just as writer Eleanor Wilder expresses in “And now a bubble burst, and now a world’: The Mutable Magnitudes of Metaphor”, “It is the burning ends of the cigarettes at night, these minute glowing circles of fire, seen in the context of a human rescue of a man from suicide and endless night, that suddenly suggest something larger seen at a great, even an immense, distance, and that distance is temporal: “the red, glowing ends burned like the/tiny campfires we lit at night/back at the beginning of the world.” (Wilder) Olds reveals that on a summer night where a man wants to end his life, he can be rescued and the city moves on responsible for its inhabitants but somewhat oblivious, a series of evolution.

Where the poem exhibits this progression and connection of man with New York City, photographer Weegee’s manages to do for his viewers by exhibiting a sensory revelation of human corruption and its connection within a community. His photo series titled “Scene of the Crime,” exploit crimes and their victims and puts it in your face forcing you to feel something and understand the bigger picture of the city at the time. In the photograph “Their First Murder” children and women are exposed to the murder of a robber. Their facial expressions and body positions make the scene seem almost beautiful and entertaining, not he stereotypical gasps that one would expect. Through a magnified clip of faces illuminated before the apartments behind them, the viewer is exposed to the variety of emotions this city can hold within itself. Weegee took pictures of what was actually going on in the city in an instant, snapshots of New York’s beauty within chaos allowing images to burn the minds of the viewer revealing the cities secrets all at once.  Journalism Jess Rodgers describes Weegee’s subjects so perfectly. “The people Weegee found on his expeditions are not characters in costume, but actual people letting their guard down in the dark, whether it be to mourn the loss of life or party in the Village.” (Rodgers, The Daily Bruin) Olds and Weegee both exemplify this idea in their mediums. When tragedy occurs in a community, its residents let their guards down for a moment and emotions are revealed, masks are taken off. And what is beneath the mask, is hardly ever what you expect.

The characters and constitutions riding with their guards down in the poem and photograph remain intact, but are not always the central focus. In Olds’ poem, it seems as though the primary focus would be on the suicidal man, but it is not. Rather, the central focus is of the other people involved; mostly the policemen. The eyewitness is the poetic vision, bringing it all together. Olds describes the bulletproof vests made to protect a father and the cops’ humble attempts to save the suicidal man’s life. Instead of seeing the man’s raw emotion, the reader sees the policemen hold up the man, taking his life back for him. While it is easier to assume the emotion of a man ready to let go of his life, Olds does not give way to describe them.  There is no talk of his depression or what made him decide to choose that New York building and that specific day. It is solely described as “the longest day of the year” and “he could not stand it.” (Olds 1) Readers are left to create their own assumptions, and instead are given the account of compassion and beginnings.  

The thing that remains constant throughout both Weegee and Olds’ work is the irony in unexpected places. In word and image, the biggest form of irony lies within the titles of the pieces of work. In “Their First Murder”, Weegee titles something so horrific, something almost witty. Though the scene is tragic, it is also entertaining. These children are witnessing what is perhaps the beginning of their loss of innocence. Violence is not always seen as something to be hidden; it can be inuring and stimulating. The title of Sharon Olds’ poem is just as ironic. Upon first reading the title, “Summer Solstice, New York City” you imagine the words would be filled with sugary images of summer in the city. Images of children, lemonade and kissing are what immediately spark the mind, but her choice to embark on the opposite of the initial expectancy is what makes the poem work. The imagery of cigarette ends, and instead of the blue of the summer sky, the “blue-grey as the sky”, is used to describe the vests of the police officers. (Olds 7) And although the title is ironic in substance, through definition it could also shape meaning. This moment is a turning point in the lives of the viewers and the suicidal man. The title could insinuate seasonal alterations put into a perspective of a massive and overwhelming city like New York.

The relationship between the city and the residents is working, holding things together that you thought would never make it. It’s all about the consistency and the ability to move through the difficulties with the skyscrapers holding hands. The city will save its residents. It’s making the relationship work through honesty and reliability. Weegee captures this relationship through graphic images combined with unexpected emotion. Saving itself from loneliness through smiles and innocence. In Olds’ poem the city would it is evident that it would save the man even if there weren’t any poet to document it. It would send the blue glistening cops up to the roof even if, “the man was armed” at the top.  It would keep them all bound to being each other’s heroes and part of each other (Olds 3). The city will not fail you; will not let you down. It is between alleys and taxicabs, crime scenes and children’s faces.  It’s there to embrace.

pillows for two

Finally something that I can grab hold of. Morrison’s words flow so beautifully and captivate me in a way that I can actually enjoy. The view of the City through the eyes of the narrator is a New York I feel as though I am experiencing right now and first felt when I began my life here.

“Nobody says it pretty here; nobody says its easy either…the City can’t hurt you. Where you pop the cork and put the cold glass mouth right up to your own. Where you can find danger or be in it; where you can fight til you drop and smile at the knife when it misses and when it doesn’t.”

The City is what you make of it. It can be a million different things at once if you want it to be. I love how Morrison allows the reader to embrace the emotions of each character and their relation to the affair that they all have been sucked into. For some reason I really love Violet. Just the image of her sitting in the middle of the street. Stopping time because she doesn’t know what else to do anymore. I feel sympathetic towards her but at the same time I do not. She wanted so badly to escape the small town life and pushed herself to get the man she had chosen and he morphed into a million different men. Cradling a baby every night because no one will hold you anymore. Rushing into a funeral like a mad woman, like that Violet, in hopes that Joe will notice her. She questions her weakness and who she has become. Who they have all become since beginning a lifetime in a City that allows you to decide for yourself. `And it makes me wonder what will happen to me after I start feeling completely comfortable here. When I have learned the street plans and wont let the City hurt me. Will I fall apart and become weak?  I am already seeing what this place can do to a person, and I am sure it has done something ot me and someone sees it in their eyes. I just don’t want to lose myself in it. I still want the Southern parts of my lower being to be there when im left alone.

(some of the imagery in this book is so inspirational)

Larsen

i am not a fan of this book.

contrary to the other texts that we have read for this course, this one seems completely depressing and unsympathetic. helga so blatantly criticizes those around her, when she too is separated from the majority of society being of mixed race.  who is she to contradict in her situation? lets refer to blacks as “jungle creatures” and hate every city that we are graciously able to encounter. i thought that larsens lack of intricate imagery and awkward sentencing made the novel extremely hard to read.  when the writer is not engaged with the main character is becomes extremely difficult to connect to the text. this is what bothered me the most.  “She had ruined her life, made it impossible ever again to do the things that she wanted, have the things that she loved, mingle with the people she liked. She had been a fool”  Give me something to work with. Please

countdown to midnight. to 20 years old. no cupcakes. no party dresses. no pink champagne. only tears. and mango tango and burger king crowns.